In the following essay, Filipowicz asserts that in his trilogy of works—The Interrupted Act,Birth Rate, and “The Guards”—Różewicz “strives to return the theatre to the realm of the unsettling truth of human existence, to a condition that is unstable and unpredictable.”

Picasso claimed that he had always had to fight his dexterity as draftsman and painter.1 Tadeusz Różewicz,2 a virtuoso master of innovative dramatic techniques, abandoned his playwriting dexterity3 to make things as difficult as possible for himself and to tease, or shock, his critics and potential audiences. Helped in part by the example of predecessors such as Witkacy and...